


Echoes of Silence

by sarahxxxlovey



Series: Life of the Party [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Porn, Banshee Lydia Martin, But she doesn't know it yet, Cheating, Consensual Sex, Dead Allison Argent, Drunk Lydia Martin, Drunk Sex, Drunk Stiles Stilinski, Emotional Tether(s), F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Infidelity, Lydia Martin Loves Stiles Stilinski, Mentioned Allison Argent, Past Stiles Stilinski/Malia Tate, Scott is a Good Friend, Semi-Public Sex, Smut, Stiles Stilinski Loves Lydia Martin, Stydia, stydia smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 03:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20594018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahxxxlovey/pseuds/sarahxxxlovey
Summary: "It hadn’t started like this, with soft kisses pressed to her lips and his fingers running gently down her arms to hold her hands. She had drunk too much and blew him in the bathroom at their best friends’ engagement party. He’d sat her on the sink and fingered her until she came all over his hand."This is that story. — Prequel to "Trilogy."





	Echoes of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> "It hadn’t started like this, with soft kisses pressed to her lips and his fingers running gently down her arms to hold her hands. She had drunk too much and blew him in the bathroom at their best friends’ engagement party. He’d sat her on the sink and fingered her until she came all over his hand."

Scott had always fallen in love easily and for a while, that didn’t matter and only mildly complicated things. Stiles got to stand by as his friend went through a roller coaster of emotions with each girl, admiring and not being able to understand the way that Scott let himself fall head over heels every time, aware of the pain that could come from it and having faith in spite of every broken heart he had racked up over the years. 

It used to be that Scott, sweet, loyal Scott, could fall in love an immeasurable amount of times and it wouldn’t affect Stiles in any way. He’d swam through his teenage years without anything really changing; it was still Scott and Stiles at the bottom of it all, the base that their lives were built around. The teenage years slowly turned into college years and adult years and now they’d gotten to the age when falling in love meant more than just crushes and awkward first times, dates and meeting the parents. Now, it meant diamond rings and growing old together, lavish gatherings celebrating important milestones and finding true love.

That was how Stiles found himself, single as hell at twenty-seven years old, going to his best friend’s engagement party. 

Scott had half-heartedly tried to convince Stiles to bring a date, attempting to persuade Stiles to try to branch out a little bit. The rest of the pack had quickly admitted that it was a pointless undertaking, but Scott still gave his best effort, despite all of the party planning that was going on with their families, the fact that he’d just gone through the stress of picking out a ring and proposing to his long-term girlfriend, and on top of it all, protecting Beacon Hills and the pack. 

Eventually, Scott gave up, like most thought he should have from the very beginning, and Stiles decided to go to the party dateless, focusing on the fact that everyone was coming back to town in a reunion of sorts, that he’d get to see his friends and his family all in one place.

He tried to distract himself by helping Melissa with the prep for the party and helping Scott pick out what alcohol he wanted to serve. Everyone was paying attention to minute details like the color of the cocktail napkins and whether they should have the florist use roses or orchids. 

Even as he tried to distract himself by keeping busy, there was a nagging feeling at the back of his head, a truth that was slowly creeping up on him: Lydia Martin was coming to the party with her NFL player boyfriend in tow. The thought of it made Stiles want to die or drink a fifth of whisky to himself or cry until he couldn’t anymore or blow off the party entirely and do something completely reckless instead of dealing with the reality that the love of his life was on the same path as his best friend, a diamond ring and a swanky engagement party. 

But he didn’t skip, he didn’t drink a stupid amount of alcohol trying to pregame, and he didn’t cry. Instead, he tied his tie neatly (the one that Scott had bought him for his last birthday, the tie that made Stiles feel so old he couldn’t bear to think about it — when had they gotten old enough to gift each other ties for special occasions?). He tucked the pockets of his dress pants in. He signed the card “your best friend for life.” He tried not to think about Lydia as he left his house.

It never got him very far, trying not to think about her. 

Thinking of her was a habit that he’d been trying to quit for years with no success. It’d been a long time since he’d seen her, at least six months ago, and an even longer time since she’d had a real conversation with him, going on years it felt like. 

She’d left Beacon Hills when they’d graduated, enrolled at MIT and graduated with her Masters by the time her 21st birthday rolled around. Of course, she couldn’t just be Valedictorian or set the curve on the SAT for their whole state or attend the best program in the country, she had to get her masters in applied mathematics before anyone else had even finished undergrad. She had to go get her Ph.D. while some of them were still fumbling through the ends of their degrees or their beginnings of their careers, showing how insignificant they all were while she lived her life all but ignoring them.

She had left, completely dropped the life and growth she’d known in Beacon Hills and had moved 3,000 miles away to a place she’d never been with people she’d never met and somehow in her mind, that was better than being home, better than being with her friends, better than being with him.

On a certain level, Stiles couldn’t blame her. There were ghosts in Beacon Hills, ghosts that followed them through the tunnels underneath the city, ghosts in the brush of the wind through the trees in the forest, on the lacrosse field where they graduated. There were scars that would never fade, the kinds of scars that made everyone attempt to pull a real smile despite the empty spaces where their friends should be around them. It was hard to escape the constant feeling of needing to be on alert in the case, the likely case even, that something would happen, that there was something dangerous creeping around the corner, waiting to ensnare them in a trap, waiting to separate them, kill them, cause more scars. 

He’d kept tabs on Lydia for all of the years in between her leaving them meeting again. There were the email alerts from Google and the diluted updates from Scott and Malia and the brief conversations with Lydia herself on the rare, rare occasion that she was in town and actually decided to get together with everyone, sitting awkwardly on the couch with her arms around herself, undoubtedly feeling like an outsider while in the middle of the familiar rhythm of the pack. When he was doing good, that was all he did, showing a sort of lackluster enthusiasm for someone who used to be one of his best friends, who held his heart in her perfectly manicured fingers and closed her hand into a fist, unconsciously squeezing until it hurt.

When it was bad he’d come home drunk from the bar and muddle his way through her published research, frantically reading like the worst she put together with let him get inside her brain, understand why she left, why she abandoned him.

He wondered if anyone knew the extent of it, the way that he never seemed to be able to get her off his mind. How he’d take a girl on a date and bail after dinner because she didn’t have strawberry blonde hair and green eyes. There was nothing wrong with any of them, but whoever she was, whoever she could become couldn’t possibly compare to what he’d had, to the depth of feelings he’d experienced from love already.

He’d tried one time, to let himself just feel and give into the semi-desperate girl begging him to come upstairs with her, and for a second it had been okay, kissing someone’s neck and hearing a beautiful woman moan in his ear and when she reached her hand down his pants and gripped her fingers around him, he thought it might be okay, sinking into the feeling of wanting and being wanted. Then he had accidentally said Lydia’s name right in the middle and as he hung his head in shame on his walk home, he wondered how it was possible. How was it possible for her claws to be so deeply ingrained in him despite the years of separation and all the bitterness he was still harboring towards how it had all gone down? 

He hated, with every fiber of his being, that he still thought about her, that she wiggled herself into his thoughts even though he desperately tried to forget her. He wondered if anyone truly realized how gone he still was after all this time, lying in bed at night, fisting himself and thinking of her desperately.

She was somehow never far off. She was in the girl sitting in front of him on the bus, tossing her hair over her shoulder and ignoring him. She was in the faint smell of caramel and strawberry coming from the patisserie down the street. She was in the pages of math equations, a kid’s homework left abandoned on a park bench as he walked home at lunch.

He flashes back to high school, a stupidly naive kid thinking that everything would work out. Believing that being tethered to her meant that she was tethered to him too. 

To be fair, a lot of it did work out, he reminded himself as he shook his head in frustration. He’d moved away a while to go to college then got his dream job and they let him move wherever he wanted. He briefly considered Boston, some errant fantasy taking over his thoughts momentarily, but eventually moved back to Beacon Hills, close to the city and most of all, close to his dad and Scott and the pack that he’d vowed to help protect. He and Scotty had lived together until his dumb best friend decided to go and get engaged, leaving Stiles in a two-bedroom apartment with no roommate and extra rent to cover. 

Still, the place felt too much like home to give up. Scott had left the coffee table, the couch, some of his mugs in the kitchen, little reminders of how Stiles used to have someone and now had no one. Sometimes it was so lonely that Stiles wanted to give up and move back in with his dad, desperate for someone to wake up to in the morning, to talk with over coffee. Those moments passed quickly and for the most part, he was content to live in a little bit of a bubble, coming home from work and drinking a beer and watching tv and falling asleep by himself, trying not to think of green eyes and strawberry blonde curls.

* * *

Scott said that everyone was meeting downstairs at the venue for a round of drinks first and Stiles grumbled his way there, still semi-looking forward to seeing people but decidedly calling a cab so that he could drink as much as he wanted if it turned out to be completely miserable.

He knew Lydia would be there when he got there. They were both in the wedding party and that would’ve been reason enough to assume that she’d be there early without any questions asked but in reality, he knew it in a way he had a hard time describing. It was on the tip of his tongue, how he knew, but when he tried to grasp for the words, they slipped through his fingers like smoke. It was like something physical in his chest loosening, a coil losing a few inches of stretch and gaining a few inches of rest. He looked down at his phone and saw the tiny icon of his Uber move closer to the bar, inching along like a representation of how slowly his life seemed to be moving compared to his surroundings. 

When he finally got there, he braced himself with a deep breath and threw open the door to the restaurant.

“Stiles!” Scott called from over the by the bar immediately, nursing a beer that everyone who knew anything could see was entirely for show. (Scott claimed to just like the taste of beer but the select few of them who were privy to all of his secrets knew better, the way that the pack tried to keep appearances for the sake of the town and their parents, especially on happy occasions like this when everyone just wanted to celebrate something normal happening in their lives.)

The coil loosened in Stiles’ chest even as his anxiety grew; he could feel her and deep down he knew, he knew that it was only a matter of moments before he saw her too. 

Unsurprisingly, he looked up and there she was, perched on one of the bar stools, sipping on what he assumed was a cranberry vodka through a straw, her cherry red lips matching her dress and her cheeks a little flushed from the growing concentration of bodies. His eyes were drawn to her like an inexplicable magnet, not wanting to go there first but just his luck, when he raised his eyes, there she was.

She turned to look back at him, the low back of her dress coming into view as she turned slightly in her chair, flipping her hair over her shoulder nonchalantly, a veil of thick curls spilling down her perfect skin as her green eyes came to meet his, the makeup around them smokey and her look entirely unreadable.

As he got closer he felt like it was easier to breathe, the reality of her being in front of him weighing him down even as he can feel how her body reacts to her being close. He wanted to scream and cry and more than any of that he wanted to leave, a familiar flash of emotions. His eyes flicked down to her wrist, the brand new bracelet that Kira had gushed about sitting and sparkling there, a gift from Lydia’s_ boyfriend _ of course, and he steeled himself against the onslaught of anger, determined to show everyone that he was better than whatever BS a pathetic sap like him was expected to carry out.

People greeted him, Isaac clapping him on the back, Malia giving him a hug and Scott telling him something that seemed mildly important but all he could focus on was Lydia, the way she looked him up and down, the way it sent an involuntary shiver up and down his spine, how she evaluated him. He stupidly hoped he measured up, thinking about the additional width of his shoulders he’d worked for during training, the new way he’d cut his hair for this weekend, knowing in the back of the mind that she’d be here. 

“Hi, Stiles,” she said like she was trying to be casual, blinking with big doe eyes, and he could tell in that moment: she knew what she was doing to him and she knew all of the different things he was feeling when she blinked at him. She could feel them too and she was feeding off of the power. 

The diamond bracelet glinted from her wrist and his jaw clenched involuntarily. 

He’d heard all about it, of course. Scott had broken the news after a few beers a few months ago, getting Stiles to just the right amount of tipsy before dropping the bomb, that their friend from high school had moved in with her new, NFL-player boyfriend. Stiles had gotten inordinately drunk that night and cried himself to sleep, the reality of the loss hitting him like a ton of bricks. It was one thing to have the girl he’d loved since he was eight in another state and a completely other thing to have her back in the same state, on the road to marrying someone else.

It wasn’t like the two of them talked, especially not with any sort of depth or familiarity. They hung out, casually and in a group, when everyone was in Beacon Hills because that’s what packs were supposed to do. But at the end of the day, he didn’t text and she didn’t call and he’d thought that was the easier way to navigate through all the history and all the feelings. That’s what he’d thought until he had seen her sitting on that stool and head heard her voice say his name and it felt like the best and worst moment of his life simultaneously, getting to see her, having her acknowledge him while knowing it could never happen.

“Hey, Lydia,” he replied without emotion and the way her name felt rolling off his tongue set a familiar ache in his heart, a solid reminder of the hundreds of times he screamed it over the years, the hundred times he wished that she would love him back. 

Her brow furrowed at him slightly, like she was confused by his cold response, and she bit her bottom lip.

The tiny motion gave him a flash of what she was like years ago, back when Allison was alive, back when she was free of Jackson and free of whatever this guy’s name was. Back when she used to be honest about who she was and regularly exercised her ability to be vulnerable, letting him see little pieces of herself, not hiding every emotion that she had, determined to be stronger than everyone else. It was the tiniest of flashes, a glimpse at the look that made him a bumbling mess on the inside, a look that had the words “you’re beautiful even when you cry” bouncing on the tip of his tongue. 

But within a moment the look was gone and her facade was back up, the cool exterior of a girl who didn’t care. 

He rolled his eyes, unable to process whatever shit she was trying to play with him and ordered a round of shots for the bridal party as they crowded around him, trying to convince himself that alcohol was what would help him feel better. 

A wave of nostalgia rolled over him and it made him yearn for another drink, the burn of alcohol going down his throat. He downed the whiskey and then ordered and downed another before reminding himself that they have another round of this too, upstairs at the rooftop bar of a restaurant they grew up going to.

He settled on sipping on a Jack and Coke, trying to keep himself under control, ignoring Lydia as they moved up into the actual party, guests milling in as the sun began to set through the floor-length windows.

The whole event was California casual to an extreme, styled chicly in white draping and decorated with big marquee letters in the engaged couple's initials. Stiles tried not to think about how much money they spent on this whole extravaganza, how much money the dropped for a perfect Friday night with incredible weather and smartly dressed waiters passing out hors d’oeuvres and glasses of champagne to a gaggle of guests in cocktail attire. 

He tugged at his tie, the fabric suffocating his neck.

This party was a big deal to everyone, and the logical part of Stiles’ brain told him that it made all the effort and expense worth it. And it was worth it, the smile that Scott has on his face as he looked at his friends, talking excitedly about the tentative plans for the big day. It was a big deal to have an upcoming marriage, to be alive long enough to do something normal like have an engagement party where all the friends and family could gather to enjoy the celebration. It was something that some of them hadn’t expected to get, that some of them would never get, Stiles realized. 

He shook his head and tried to snap himself out of those thoughts, of Allison and Aiden and Boyd and Eric. He needed to try to just enjoy the party and getting to see everyone, to push his bitterness and skepticism down with the rest of the parts of himself he didn’t often like to visit. 

The room continued to fill and he looked over the tops of everyone’s heads, hating the fact that so many people were taller than him. 

Everyone had flown in from around the country. Derek, Braeden, and Isaac made their way in from wherever the hell they’d been, chasing down an errant pack that was intentionally trying to turn dozens of unsuspecting college students under the guise of a cult. Lydia flew back in from Boston, her boyfriend who had yet to be seen hypothetically in tow, but he tried not to think about that for the time being. Liam, Hayden, and Mason huddled in a corner; the three of them hadn’t really left town other than for college, staying close to Scott after everything that had happened.

His consciousness buzzed in and out around him, half paying attention to the conversations going on around him as he tried to think of the last time he’d had so many people he’d met over the years in one room. Scott’s neighbors from across the street who they’d played with as kids, all their friends from high school, a room full of memories of people, some of whom knew the truth and substantial part that didn’t. Stiles recognized the back of Chris’ Argent’s head from the other side of the patio, a painful spike piercing his heart as he felt the alcohol start pumping through his blood.

“You okay?” Lydia asked from next to him, leaning in slightly, still working on her first drink outside of the shot. 

He turned to her, the concern in her eyes doing anything but calm him; instead, it pissed him off before he could stop it, anger bubbling inside of him. Whatever she was trying to do was fake. It was fake empathy, fake pity, fake emotion from a girl who had spent so much time acting like she didn’t care about them that now wanted to pretend that she did and he couldn’t stand it. His eyes tried to focus on her in the dark room as he opened his fat mouth to say something that would make her feel as bad as he felt.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Stiles said, hearing how slurred his words sounded and trying to shake his head to push the alcohol stupor away. 

“He’s not here,” she said shortly with an eye roll. “He plays professional football, they have a game in Seattle this weekend.

“Didn’t want to go?” he sneered. “Washington state not your thing?” 

“I wanted to be here for my best friends, Stiles,” she spat back at him, her eyes narrowing now, “Don’t be an asshole.” 

“Funny that you call them your best friends and hardly talk to them.”

She cocked her head with a gesture that reminded him eerily of the Lydia who dated the captain of the lacrosse team and paid him absolutely no mind. The familiarity of it struck a chord and the nerves kicked in, suddenly very much so aware of the flaw in his logic.

“Just because I don’t talk to _you,_” she said slowly, enunciating her words in a way that made him feel like a child, her tone cutting straight into the center of him, “doesn’t mean I don’t talk to everyone else.”

“Good for you, Lydia,” he said as he slammed his empty glass down on the bar hard enough to make the girl next to Lydia jump in her seat, turning to stalk away, intent on not looking back even as he felt her eyes boring a hole in his back. “Good for you.” 

* * *

He slumped against a wall across the room from Lydia, telling himself that it wasn’t so that he could watch her so much as it was so that he could watch the whole room and in a few minutes, he was joined by welcome company, the company of someone who could always snap him out of something, could always reason with him, who always made him feel better.

If there was one person that brought out the patient side of him, it was Malia. 

It was a combination of too many things, her blatant lack of awareness for societal rules, her disregard for whether or not something was accepted before she did it. The way she looked up at him with big brown eyes and saw the best in him even despite knowing the worst. She was honest in a refreshing way, a way that other people weren’t honest with him. While Lydia hid her feelings and Scott tried not to hurt anyone else’s, Malia was upfront and blunt and told it how it was.

Maybe the connection came from the fact that he was her anchor. She was the only person who chose him to pull them back. Scott chose Allison and then himself, Lydia chose no one, Isaac chose his dad, Derek chose his anger. Everyone else had chosen other things, other people, other idols. 

But Malia… Malia had chosen Stiles.

At the end of the day, he had been her caretaker through a lot of tough moments. He had talked her down from rages, held her while she tried to control her transformations, helped her through those first few months as a creature on two legs. He had tried to help her understand why other people acted the way they did even when she didn’t have the capacity for it. Something about the whole reality of their experiences together made him extra protective of her, extra understanding, extra patient. Even though things hadn’t worked between them, he still wanted what was best for her, his feelings for her morphing into something more like a pack. 

“Stiles,” said Malia, slurring her words. He chuckled and looked down at her, wondering how much she would’ve had to drink in order to get this level of sloshed. 

“Hey, Malia,” he replied, putting his arm around her as she leaned onto his shoulder. 

She blinked up at him. 

“What?” he asked curiously, pulling her closer to him. 

“It’s rude…” she replied, half to him and half to herself. 

“You can tell me,” he laughed. 

“You smell sad,” she said honestly, looking up at him, perplexed. 

“Yeah,” he admitted, taking a swig of his drink.

“Why are you sad?” she asked, her brows furrowing. 

“It’s nothing.” He chanced a look Lydia’s way and their eyes met, his stomach clenching uncomfortably as she let her eyes keep traveling across the room, gliding cooly over him.

Malia looked up at him and then back around the room, her eyes landing on the woman Stiles was trying to forget “Is it because of Lydia?” 

He looked down at her, remembering in vivid detail a time when an exchange like that would have passed by her without notice. 

“When did you get insightful?” he chuckled emptily. 

She shrugged underneath him and pulled her jacket tighter around herself despite the warmth in the room.

“Things are just… complicated,” he said with a shrug. 

“Sounds like you guys need to bang it out,” she said simply, taking another long pull from her own drink.

“I don’t think that’d work,” he said, following Lydia’s figure as she crossed the room, her dress standing out like a spotlight, directing and attracting his eyes wherever she went. 

She shrugged. “You never know.” 

“I guess.”

“You should go talk to her,” Malia said suddenly. “She was looking forward to seeing you.”

“Doubtable.”

“I’m serious, Stiles.”

“Again, doubtable.” 

“She said so herself and—”

“Do we have to do this now? I don’t want to—”

“Do you not trust me?” Malia said suddenly, glaring at him as she shrugged his arm off of her shoulder. “Seriously, do you trust _ anyone _?”

He flashed back to a younger Scott, questioning the same thing at him and the answer he spat back. 

The answer was still no. 

No, _ because you trust everyone. _

And what had changed in the past decade? He was still here, bitter and angry because Scott was able to open up his heart, even after everything that they’d been through, and Stiles still couldn’t, afraid of everything, looking around every corner for another threat. He was still stuck in the same behavior he’d seen from his dad, the same circles of trying to ignore the hard things around him, the death and the danger and the general lack of safety he dealt with on a semi-daily basis. He was still trying to forget Lydia by drinking, still trying to get through the time between cases without falling into a pit of not doing laundry and too many empty beer bottles.

“Go talk to her, you dumbass,” Malia said angrily, huffing as she walked away. 

He sighed, a weight heavy in his chest, and took another swig of his drink, wondering when the hell Malia Tate had gotten to be so insightful. 

* * *

He walked slowly back towards the bar, eyes scanning for a red dress in the crowds and sooner than he could find anyone else, there she was. Lydia Martin in the flesh, as maddingly perfect as ever, standing in sky-high heels as always, pretending to look nonchalant, wanting to seem like she was blending into the background without really committing to the role. 

She was practically a star in front of the big walls of windows as the sun set behind her, her hair and her dress glowing together and the cogs in her brain working in overtime, observing and playing the perfect role as a member of the bridal party as Kira gushed to her about something. 

He wondered how anyone, let alone so many people, could walk past her and be completely oblivious of what a perfect mess was sitting in front of them, the way that she pulsed under pressure, how her mind worked like nobody he’d ever met, how she’d saved all of their asses on multiple occasions. They just passed her by, completely unaware of how perfect and broken and caring and selfish one person could be at the same time.

Sometimes he wondered if the pack’s ability to pick up on chemo signals had rubbed off on him. Their eyes met and he had a rush of emotion that wasn’t his own, his heart mirroring what he knew she was feeling too. Like two sides of the same coin, they were. Made of the same material and mold, finished with different faces.

He walked over to her, determined to make this okay and he could practically feel how she was judging him as he walked over, looking him up and down disdainfully. He wanted to hide into a corner, ashamed at his alcohol-fueled actions, of the words that seemed to fall out of his mouth without his permission. 

She was angry, _ really _ angry with him at first, her eyes narrowing and her tone edgy, and he was angry like she was too, angry at himself for letting her have a hold over him like that, angry at his eyes for the way they found her so quickly. He was angry at her for letting herself string him along like this, smiling at him like she was so happy to see him and then insulting him like he was gum on the bottom of her shoe. He swallowed his pride and said sorry, ordering a drink for her as a peace offering.

He tried his hardest to make small talk, feeling the change in her, how the walls that she put up around herself started to fall just slightly, slipping back into a pattern that they hadn’t been in for years now, the inner protection that matched built up around his heart and mind-melting. He could read her like a book, the satisfaction that she gained from his slight groveling, trying to suck up to her as they both pretended it wasn’t happening.

(Lydia Martin likes nothing more than being told she’s right.) 

They sat in two barstools next to each other as the party filled even more, as heavier, more substantial food start spilling out of the kitchen. There was a buzz as everyone got tipsy and he felt the buzz more than ever, his tongue heavier and his words looser, caring less and less about whether or not Lydia loved him back. It was a familiar sensation, one that often came with alcohol at the peak of his buzz, where things felt okay and his troubles seemed far away.

At some point, she clipped the toe of her shoe under the bar of his chair, turning towards him and resting her arm on the back of his stool, the low neck of her dress teasing him and drawing his eyes more than he’d like to admit. 

She stayed next to him, perched in that seat, and he hated and loved every second of it, the fact that she was so close to him that he could tell she was wearing the same perfume as she did in high school. The name of it was back on the tip of his tongue before he could realize he had forgotten it. _ Miss Dior Cherie. _ He remembered seeing it on her dresser in her bedroom, the little bow on the top of the bottle. 

It seemed young for her now, to be wearing something that smelled like a teenager did but maybe in some ways she was still that girl, flippant and uncaring, cold to people she cared about while she made decisions no one approved of.

She was filling up his senses without him realizing that it was happening. His entire peripherals were filled with strawberry blonde, his scent enrapturing entirely with notes of caramel and oddly, strawberries too, the feeling of her hand brushing his back every few minutes and sending a shiver down his spine. Even when he turned to try to focus on someone else, if someone came up to say hello, he found himself turning back to her, focused on her, so in sync that it scared him a little bit. 

“How’s work?” she asked, sipping her second red drink slowly as she looked at him coyly. 

It made three drinks for her and as long as her alcohol tolerance hadn’t completely flipped in the last decade, he knew that he was feeling happily buzzed. Not drunk but definitely feeling it. 

“Working a lot.”

“How much is a lot?” 

“70 hour weeks are pretty common these days.” 

“Must be tough,” she said and she meant it too, the soft edges in her tone voicing something close to sympathy, or maybe even empathy. It was more genuine than it had been before, when he’d gotten angry about her asking if he was okay. He could tell that she actually meant it right now. He could always tell with her. 

“Gotta do what you gotta do,” he replied with a shrug.

“I suppose.” 

“I’ve heard you’re kicking ass as per usual,” he commented lightly, attempting to keep the nerves out of his voice, trying to hide how much he actually cared. . 

She bit back a laugh and adjusted her hair slightly. “That’s one way to put it.” 

“You wrote that paper concerning the Riemann in function fields and—”

“How did you hear about that?” she asked, clearly surprised that someone was bringing up her niche academic article in a normal conversation, even if it was Stiles and he had always listened and had always paid attention. 

Her eyes had softened and his heart broke into a million shattered, fragmented pieces. He wanted to tell her everything, how desperately he thought of her, how he never seemed to be able to escape thoughts of her no matter how hard he tried. How he was haunted by ghosts, figments of his imagination around every corner of his small apartment, how he woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, feeling around for a person that had never been there next to him in bed. 

It must have been all over his face because she looked at him, eyes searching his face for hints.

“Are you okay?” she asked, concern filling her eyes and he had to swallow back the lump that formed in his throat. When was the last time that someone actually asked if he was okay? Scott had given up after Stiles had brushed off the question one too many times, just accepting the canned answer he usually gave. 

“‘M fine,” he said, clearing his throat. 

“Stiles…” 

“I’m fine, Lydia, really,” he insisted, patting the top of her hand gently with his. 

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” she said, softly and insistently, the bossy ghost of the person that she always seeping in through the cracks.

He wondered why she even had to ask. He knew, he knew deep down that she could practically read his thoughts just like he could hear what she was saying even before she opened her mouth.

Deaton had said something to him about it randomly, knowingly, a few years back. He’d talked about the way that Stiles and Lydia were connected and the way that her emotions felt like his sometimes. The tether, the physical anchor that had likely been forged like iron from their experiences over the years was partially responsible; the fact that he had left his life in her hands and trusted that she could bring him back, pull him up again, also played a part. 

And back then, he trusted her with his life and she had done the right thing. She’d saved him that time and time and time again after that, acting as his anchor when he couldn’t keep his feet on the ground and his comfort when he was dragged down too low.

And there were still remnants of that bond, the way that he knew every expression on her face as plainly as if they were built with letters instead of features, how the curve of her eyebrow meant something different than a purse of her lips. Sometimes it was just a feeling, like a thought in his head that wasn’t quite his, emotions that didn’t match his own. 

All those times though, they were years ago. Years ago, when he was able to pick her apart with absolute certainty before Allison died and Lydia ran away, before Stiles had to try to become his own anchor, because he realized that he could not and would never be hers. 

“I’m on edge,” he admitted, his tone dropping low, trying to not meet her eyes. “On edge to be here with all these people.”

She took her bottom lip in her mouth and looked at him coyly. “Is it all these people… or is it me?” 

“Lydia…”

Her eyes bore a hole into the side of his head. “Well?” 

He chuckled sadly into his beer, wondering how he could never resist her, how easily she turned him to putty in her hands. “It’s you.” 

She looked at him thoughtfully and he couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking, what was going on inside that brain of hers. She smiled softly and then a grin broke out over her face, a grin that made him anxious, but this time mostly in a good way.

“Do I make you nervous, Stiles?” she asked teasingly, her nails brushing against his back slightly and he hated it, he hated how his body reacted to her even his permission, the way that one little touch from her slender fingers on his back sent an excited shiver down his spine and straight to his crotch.

“You know you don’t.”

“Then what is it?” 

He wanted to answer and yet couldn’t, his voice choked and all of the anxiety that he’d been pushing down for the last two hours slowly coming back up the surface, bubbling right under his skin in his chest and his throat.

“You don’t make me nervous, but you put me on edge and… and you know what it is and honestly, I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Stiles, just—” 

“I don’t have the strength to talk about it and—”

“Wait—”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Lydia,” he said, his tone harsher than he’d meant it to be, pushing up from his stool to leave her alone.

Something grabbed his hand and pulled him back. 

“Don’t leave,” she said when he turned around to look at her fingers gripping the sleeve of his shirt. “Please. I’ll be nice, I promise.” 

He exhaled heavily and she moved her hand to actually grasp his, electricity buzzing up his spine. 

“Please, Stiles,” she repeated, her voice taking on the vulnerability that he felt at having her hand in his after all this time. The hint of desperation in her voice stopped him in his tracks, tugging on all of the heartstrings he had tried to clip over the years, all of the emotions that he had hopelessly tried to bury coming to the surface in a millisecond. 

“Okay,” he sighed dejectedly, letting her pull him back, taking his seat again. “No trying to psychoanalyze me, though.”

“I promise I’ll be nice,” she said with a small laugh, attempting to placate him.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see,” he chuckled hollowly, trying to ignore the way that his heart was beating rapidly in his chest. 

He turned to look at her and can tell something was still bothering her, something bubbling right underneath the surface. 

“Are you mad at me?” he asked. 

He could feel the wheels turning in her head, the cogs moving together in a way he’d never try to understand even if he felt her deep in his bones.

“No,” she said honestly, taking her bottom lip in her mouth in a way that he knew meant she was experiencing a strong emotion. He stopped himself from reaching out to grab her hand and squeeze, knowing that if he did that it would only be a matter of time before he was on the ground, begging her to love him.

So instead, he focused on his beer, the one that the bartender had just placed in front of him with a grimace, despite his brain yelling at him that everything was wrong, that this should be their party, that he should run away from her and the heartbreak, the letdown, the disappointment, the unrequitedness of it all and run as fast as he could. 

“It is me though, isn’t it?” she asked softly, stirring her drink with the tiny straw as he tried to focus on anything but the bracelet on her wrist, the reminder that her heart belonged to someone else. “The reason you’re on edge. All this… anxiety.” 

“It’s… it’s not all you,” he said, his voice only barely convincing, “It’s good to see you, really.”

“Not _ all _ me,” she repeated sadly, “But partially me at least.”

“Just a little bit,” he said with a half-hearted smile, bumping his shoulder against hers gently.

He watched her out of the corner of her eye, staring intently down at her drink and opening her mouth like she was going to say something multiple times, each time more unsure than the time before that. 

“I’m sorry, Stiles,” she said suddenly and the smallness of her voice made him turn. “I’m sorry I couldn’t… I just couldn’t… ”

Her voice broke and his heart went along with it. 

He could feel it, all the reasons she wanted to apologize and how she couldn’t find the words to say it in the right way, in a way that felt big enough to cover all that they’d been through over the years. How do you even apologize for something with that much history? She had left, left for Boston and never looked back until she moved back to California, and even then, she was different. She didn’t talk about Allison, she didn’t joke and laugh as she used to, not in a way that was carefree and didn’t care what other people thought. He had lost touch with his anchor and in a moment, he realized that he had a ton to apologize for too, for not trying harder to stay afloat, for not reaching out, for not trying to be better and he could feel the guilt in her for all the same things. 

“Hey, hey,” he said suddenly, turning to her and taking her hands in his, hating the way that any form of sadness from her made him jump in to save her, “It’s okay. I know it’s… it’s been rough for everyone.” 

“But I left and—”

“Lydia,” he said sternly, determined to cut off whatever thought trail her brain was running down, knowing that how fast she moved meant she could dig herself into a hole that much faster, “I said I get it.”

She nodded, looking up at him with big green eyes filled with tears, sniffling slightly. “Okay.” 

“You need another drink?” he asked, looking for a distraction, his voice lower than usual.

“Probably,” she replied, downing the last inch of her cranberry vodka. 

He ordered another drink for both of them and Stiles tried to remember which round this was. Four? Six? Five? Lydia seemed infinitely more aware of herself than he did, but he could see it, the alcohol blurring her edges, the flirtier, more direct side coming out of her. She was starting to let go of the idea that she needed to impress him, make her like him, win him over.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” she said playfully, leaning into him, interrupting his thoughts. 

“Uh…” He wracked his brain as his hands started to sweat. “I was nervous to come here tonight.” 

She rolled her eyes. “I already knew that.” 

“How?” he asked incredulously. 

“I can tell,” she replied with a shrug and a flash of recognition across her face. “I can… feel it, I guess. When you’re anxious.” 

He stared at her for a pregnant moment before taking a long swig of his drink. 

_ Tethers. Anchors. An emotional connection. _

“Yeah,” he said heavily. “I get that.” 

“So that doesn’t count then. Something else. Something I _ really _ don’t know.” 

“Something you don’t already know?” he asked, thoroughly enjoying the way she was grinning at him, his heart speeding in his chest in a way that was entirely pleasurable, the alcohol pulsing lazily through his blood, blurring the lines around the hurt he was trying to mask.

“Yup,” she said, biting her bottom lip as she smiled. 

“Want to know how I knew about that article?” 

She nodded enthusiastically, leaning into him and the way that he could see down the front of her dress even more now. He was sure she knew, how much she was showing him. Apparently she didn’t care. 

He chuckled and swallowed thickly. “I have a Google alert of your name.”

Her eyes widened. “You do?” 

“Yup,” he said, grimacing and taking another drink.

“Anything good ever pop up?” she teased.

“Mostly papers, publications, industry articles. Shit like that.” 

“Boring,” she said teasingly.

“Still cool. I’ve read most of them.”

She looked surprised. “You have?” 

“Well…” He shrugged. “Yeah. Of course I have.” 

She looked down at her drink, now full, and stirred the little plastic straw around again, biting her bottom lip now out of an emotion he couldn’t quite place.

“What?” he asked. 

“No one ever reads them,” she admitted, her voice sad and low and confused and he flashed back to all those years ago, kneeling on the floor of his room and unraveling a red string from her finger. 

“Well, I do,” he said with a small smile, bumping his shoulder against hers again.

“I should’ve known,” she replied, her voice lowering. “If anyone would read them, it’d be you.”

There was a moment between them, like the thousands of moments that had occurred over the year. She looked up at him and a glimmer of hope appeared in his heart, something that said she wanted this too, that maybe she needed him just a little bit more than she wanted to let on. He shook his head, trying to bring himself out of the drunkenness and into the reality of the fact that she had left him, that she was dating someone else, that she didn’t call him even though she called their friends. 

“Now just to clarify,” he said seriously, breaking the tension between them, “reading does not necessarily denote understanding.”

“True,” she laughed, taking another sip and smiling shyly at him. 

\-----

The evening wore on and Stiles lost track of time, sitting with Lydia and talking to her like they used to in high school, back when they used to pour over bestiaries and archaic latin, looking for connections and clues in the supernatural, when he’d look up to find her looking at him smiling. But now was different, deeper somehow. They argued about current events, about human morality, about the validity of a court case that Stiles had been involved in, about seemingly bigger things that they’d ever talked about.

They avoided certain topics together, skirting around them and walking on eggshells when they got too close to something that had agreed was inappropriate nonverbally. She didn’t talk about Allison or the arrow tattoo on her hip bone that she got on her 18th birthday. He didn’t bring up how he was worried about how much he drank, about how he woke up in a cold sweat sometimes. She didn’t talk about her powers or how she was dealing with them. They didn’t talk about her boyfriend or whether he was seeing anyone. They don’t talk about their pasts, but they do talk about the upcoming wedding, about her work and his work, about the possibilities of the future. 

Stiles checked in with Scott every half hour to make sure everything was going okay, that nobody needed any fires put out and that the bride was still happy with how the way things were going. But mostly, mostly he paid attention to Lydia, hanging onto every articulate word from her perfect lips, every witty quip she threw his way, the way that her eyes lit up when she talked about work and darkened when a shadow of the past crept in.

At some point he realized that he was feeling too much, too raw from the alcohol and the occasion and at the core of it all, it hurt him how easily he fell back into his old patterns, attracting to her like a moth to a flame. 

He’d come into the night determined not to fall back in love with her, talking to himself as if he had ever fallen out. He was determined not to jump at the chance to do something just because he thought there was a chance that it would make her happy. And here he was, mere hours later, doing everything she asked simply so that he could see a smile bloom across her face.

It was almost worse now, realizing that he had never fallen out of love with her and getting a taste of what she was like again after all the months of not having the real her in front of him, of having her absence or her with a mask on as she hid from him. 

There were too many things going on around him and to keep himself grounded he focused on her voice, anchored onto her as she smiled and laughed and teased. The music from the sound system in the corners, the waiters pushing shrimp cocktail and spanakopita onto his tiny little plate, the alcohol slowly wearing down on him and now something else buzzing in the back of his brain too: anticipation. 

It started with the way that Lydia was touching; it felt different. It wasn’t just a grounding touch when his anxiety spiked after Chris Argent came to say hi or when someone asked an uncomfortable question about his line of work, prodding a little too hard to get a detail about his life. It was more than that. She was drawn to him in a way that felt weird to have reciprocated; it had always been him chasing after her, anchoring himself to her when things got to be too overwhelming, but tonight she seemed to need him too. 

There were too many clues that he couldn’t make sense of. The way that she kept her hand on his lower back as they walked across the room to go through another round of hellos. She wrapped her fingers into the fabric and he could feel her knuckles against his back as she dragged him back towards her when she couldn’t keep up. She looked over at him every few minutes when they weren’t together, seeming to make sure he was doing okay. The look in her eyes, admiringly looking up at him and biting her lip teasingly.

All the signals and wires were crossing in Stiles’ brains, telling him to go and stop at the same time, desperate to push forward and ardently desiring to slam on the breaks. 

Even Scott said something to him, pushed in a corner with the same beer in his hand from earlier, undoubtedly lukewarm by this point as Stiles tried to hide his disgust.

“What’s up?” Stiles prompted as Scott stared at him for a couple silent moments.

“She seems… different with you tonight,” he said quietly to Stiles, huddled near the door. 

“Who?”

“Lydia,” Scott replied with an eye roll. 

Stiles turned back to look over at her quickly and their eyes met as she smiled, his heart pounding in his chest at the sight of her across the room, the dim lights making her eyes look even sexier than normal. He wondered if Scott could hear how his heartbeat was pounding against his chest.

“Couldn’t tell you why,” Stiles replied with a shrug, trying to ignore the fact that Scott was right, that something was different.

“I…” Scott started and then cut himself off. “Nevermind.” 

“What?” Stiles pushed. 

“It’s nothing,” Scott replied quickly. 

“Scotty—”

“Just… be careful, yeah?” Scott said delicately, taking a moment and then plastering a smile on, a smile that Stiles saw right through. He clapped Stiles on the back before walking away.

Stiles watched him as he walked away, completely able to tell that Scott was hiding something and he was tempted to push back, to run up behind him and insist that Scott spill the beans. Was he picking up emotions off of someone? Had she said something to him? In the end, Stiles let it slide, determined to take whatever exposure to Lydia he could get.

“Whatever, you weirdo!” Stiles called out across the room to Scott’s back, making a few people look at him curiously. He gesticulated a bit, waving everyone off as the tension started peaking within him again. 

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of Scott’s seemingly random, unexplained warning and scanned the room quickly, looking for a familiar face as thoughts started to swirl around his head, blurring his vision slightly as he started to become overwhelmed with it all. 

Lydia Martin had been here all night and although he hadn’t gotten over her and had always been 100% in love with her, it felt like he was 1000% in love with her now, tumbling down a cliff he had no hopes of climbing back up. He had hung on her every word, falling for her harder every second that she gave him another little part of herself, let him into a little bit of the way she was feeling, of what she’d been up to these years since he’d really, _ really _ seen her. 

Scott’s warning rang in his ears. _ Be careful, _ he’d said.

_ Be careful, what the hell did that mean? _

He knew what it meant, deep down. Be careful with her — she’ll only break your heart. Be careful — she’ll never love you back. Be careful — she’s in a relationship with someone else. And underneath it all, be careful — _ you might never come back fro this. _

Stiles needed air and he needed it right in that very moment, something that felt the opposite of the stifling heat in the room, something to help calm the pit of whatever the feeling was in his stomach. Anxiety? Anticipation? He sucked down the rest of the drink and pushed his way through the crowd as quickly, reaching the patio just as he felt a wave of heat roll uncomfortably over him, gulping the fresh air as he leaned against the bannister, a flight above the street below him.

Beacon Hills spread out in front of him, twinkling gently through the beginnings of the fog rolling over the hills. It was chillier than it was before but someone it made him feel better, the grounding crisp air washing over the sweaty back of his neck.

If he could heat map all the places he’d spent the most time as an adolescent, he’d see some glowing parts scattered all over his hometown, along the valley and up into the hills, across the woods and into the neighborhoods. He could see everything from here. The glaring lights of the football stadium at the high school, probably hosting a lacrosse game at this time of year. The edges of the dense woods around them. The park near Scott’s house where they used to practice and his dad’s house and the general area where his apartment was now, harder to see as it was on the further side of town.

He checked his senses for a distraction, the cold metal of the railing against his arms where the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. A couple of girls giggling in the corner, one of them complaining that her feet hurt. A siren a couple of streets away mixed with the bass of the music coming from behind him. The overwhelming smell of beer and a mix of perfume. An annoying group of guys next to him talking about the hot bridesmaid, the hot red-headed one that is, and he had to roll his eyes.

_ It’s strawberry blonde, you dimwits. _

And just like that, his thoughts were back on Lydia, just where they always seemed to end up. It seemed like all he could think about was Lydia. How she’d almost died over there on that field, how they’d kissed in the locker room there and never talked about it again, how she’d come unannounced into his room and how he’d told her that he’d go out of her mind, where he’d rescued her from the creepy hospital on the outskirts of town. The places that she ran into someone else’s arms as he stood with tears in his eyes, trying to act like he was okay.

Sighing, a deep heavy sigh that made him feel older than he’d ever felt, feeling slightly sick at himself and how much he’d let himself drink, already almost hungover. At the end, he had to admit that Lydia had been acting differently. She seemed somehow more sure and unsure of herself at the same time. She seemed to want something that she couldn’t quite convince herself to go after, like wanting to be drunker and not wanting to stomach through a shot of tequila to get there, the burn or the shivers at the back of your throat just too much to handle. Wanting the result without the work, looking for excuses outside of herself. 

He shook his head, trying to clear his brain and attempting to let the fresh air sober him up a little bit, the last half of his last drink catching up with him, the familiar feeling of getting just a little bit too drunk creeping up on him. 

It was the worst feeling, realizing that he was too drunk. The way that his mouth seemed to catch up with his brain instantaneously, spilling out all of his thoughts before he could stop any of them. The way that he seemed even clumsier than normal, his extremities just slightly detached from his body, like they were a few inches too short or long depending on the moment. 

He stretched his hand, remembering Lydia’s fingers intertwined with his as she convinced him to sit, to stay with her, to talk. He could practically feel them and the way that they seemed to fit together perfectly. If he focused hard enough, he could smell her perfume, the lingering fruity sweet scent that was so quintessentially her, especially how she was at the height of his obsession with her in high school, when he was a bumbling gaggle of skin and bones, trying to convince himself that she would love him too eventually, even despite the feeling that it wasn’t true.

Nearly ten years it had been. Nearly twenty years in the grand scheme of things, when he let himself think that far into the past, slipping into nostalgia. Twenty years he’d spent pining over her, obsessing over every look she gave him, every brush of their fingers.

At his core, was he any different now? He was still hopelessly enamored with her even when he tried to hide it with biting sarcasm and contempt. He was still thinking about her alone at night, wondering as he fell asleep whether she was thinking of him too. Replaying in his head over and over again how she must be kissing this other guy. In his head, she falls into bed with him, kissing her perfect pink lips down his neck, rewarding a guy who put football over his girlfriend, rewarding a guy who couldn’t possibly realize what he had in front of him. There was no way that whoever he was really understood everything about her as Stiles did.

And still, he couldn’t figure out everything that she was feeling, that tension buzzing between them, the type that he could feel in his fingers and underneath his skin. 

He shook his head out of frustration, wanting another drink despite everything.

Stiles turned back to the door frame and his breath hitched.

In the end, of course, Lydia was there. She was watching him as she leaned against the doorframe, biting her lip like she had seemed to be doing all night. But then her expression changed, the corners of her mouth pulling up while she kept her lip caught in her teeth, her glowing green eyes traveling down his body, lingering on his belt buckle, then moving back up the way they went down.

Elevator eyes is what Malia had called that look one time, tipsy at a bar while some guy looked her up and down. 

And with a start, he realized what was happening: Lydia was checking him out.

That’s what he’d been picking up on, the unfamiliar tension that she’d been hiding just under the surface. It was… sexual tension, palpable now that he knew what it was. Thoughts tumbled through his head at the thought that it must have been what Scott was hiding too. He must have smelled it on her.

Stiles shook his head, the rest of the last drink quickly catching up with him as the realization dizzied him. 

She motioned with her head for him to join in and he walked quickly towards her, trying to find the words to tell her that he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t sit here and act like he didn’t know what was going on when all the feelings were swirling in his head and he couldn’t tell her how it made him feel, like all of his insides were being smothered by something stronger than himself, an emotion he couldn’t wrap his head around.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.

He entered the room, instantly feeling hot again and scanned, looking for her head. He pushed through the crowd clumsily, blinking rapidly to get his eyes re-adjusted to the dark room.

“Stiles,” a voice came from behind him.

He moved abruptly, slightly startled, and like slow motion, he could feel his elbow bump into something cold and wet, turning instantly to see as Lydia’s full vodka cranberry spilled all down her leg and the side of her dress. 

“Oh my god, Lydia, I’m so sorry—”

She looked a little shell shocked, but whether it was from the cold of the ice or the fact that he’d likely just ruined her dress, he couldn’t tell.

“It’s okay,” she said after a few seconds of silence, blinking slowly. “It’s okay.”

“Lyds—”

“I just have to wash it off,” she said, taking a deep breath, her brows furrowing until she looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, seriously, I’m such a klutz—”

“Come with me?” she whispered softly, licking her lips and moving closer to him, just barely enough so that he could tell it was intentional. Her voice had taken a tone he had only ever hoped to hear from her and instantly he felt a stirring in his pants. 

“What?” he stuttered, looking down at her in disbelief.

It was like the calm before the storm. On some level, he knew what was going to happen if he went to the bathroom to help her clean up.

“Please,” she said softly and he wondered if he’d ever been able to deny her anything when she talked to him and looked at him like that. If in that very second, she had asked him in that moment to fetch her the moon, he would have packed 238,855 miles of rope and been on a spaceship within the hour. 

“What—” he stuttered, his jaw going slack.

“Come with me, Stiles,” she said gently, resolutely, walking backward slowly, miraculously not running into anyone, but of course she didn’t. She was practically an angel walking on clouds, holding her hand out to him. 

He reached out and grabbed it unsteadily, still in shock.

“C’mon,” she said, slightly impatiently this time, a smile hiding right behind the glare, dragging him by the hand towards the back hallway towards the single-stall bathroom, the diamonds glittering around her wrist where their hands touched. 

He wanted to tell her to take the bracelet off and put it somewhere, anywhere really, but if he had his choice, he’d tell her to flush it down the toilet or throw it off the roof. 

She pulled the door open suddenly, pulling him in behind her. He thought he heard the click of the lock on the door behind him and the slight reassurance of privacy was enough for him, focusing entirely on Lydia Martin in front of him and the way she was looking at him, eyes clouded with what he thought was lust, chest heaving as she breathed heavily.. 

His thoughts flashed to his friends, standing and sitting outside in the party, completely unaware that Lydia was dragging him into a bathroom stall to do something he couldn’t quite put his finger on yet. He was aching for an answer, desperate for the reasoning behind what she doing, for a glimpse into the way that her brain worked, the crossed wires and red strings. 

“Stiles,” she said or breathed or moaned. It was his name all right, but it had been years since someone had used that tone with him, used that tone when he wanted them to. But this wasn’t just some girl, moaning his name emptily as he tried to muster up passion while he kissed her. 

This wasn’t just some girl. This was Lydia Martin, leaning up against the sink and looking at him with a greedy, hungry look in her eyes. 

He walked slowly to her, his pace quickening with each step and suddenly he was kissing her, her arms wrapped around his neck as she pulled him closer, closer, harder against him.

He lifted her up by her ass and sat her on the sink, leaning in to kiss at her neck. 

“Stiles,” she whispered, her voice slurring slightly and he prayed that she wasn’t too drunk for what they were doing. 

“What t’fuck are we doing?” he asked into the skin of her neck, kissing her hot and heavy, running his tongue down the length of her jaw and nibbling on her ear. 

His blood was pumping south, his head spinning, the smell of her was all around him, urging him on and making all his dreams come true.

And it was a dream come true. Lydia Martin was kissing him like she never wanted to stop, spreading her legs so that he could stand between them, rubbing herself back and forth against the zipper on his pants. He could feel the anticipation buzzing on her and he realized that this must have been what Scott was smelling, her desperation and desire for him. For _him_. Her hands buried in his hair and he groaned her name, all thoughts of Scott leaving his head in an instant.

“Lyds, fuck,” he said, his voice slightly slurred himself as she pulled him closer, rubbing herself against him.

He was convinced that his words would be slurring even if he hadn’t taken those shots, even if he hadn’t had that last drink he definitely hadn’t needed. His body was pumping with lust, every ounce of blood pumping southward and it was making him feel drunker than he was, dizzy with the thought of it all. 

He’d been thinking about this, about how she spins and shines in the middle of the party. Ever since she’d run her nails along his back, lightly and teasingly, he’d been thinking about all the ways he wished she’d be bad, to go further and up to cloud nine with him. 

She kissed down his neck, latching on to where his heart was beating through his skin.

“I need— I need,” he stuttered, trying to put into words all that he was feeling. Empty and broken and whole and desperate all at the same time, hollow on the inside while a fire threatened to consume him, a fire that Lydia was fueling with every passing minute, the way she was running her nails across his skin, biting at his lip, gasping in his ear.

She nibbled on his neck, more slowly, like her thoughts were distracting her again and he wondered when it got so fucked up, so fucked up that they couldn’t even make out with someone without thoughts seeping into his consciousness, the kinds of thoughts that made it very hard to focus on the feeling of her lips on his neck and made it very easy to focus on all the ways that this could go wrong, all the reasonings he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing. All the reasons that he shouldn’t even want to do what he was doing. 

But this was complicated, wasn’t it? Stiles was half-drunk and Lydia was in a relationship, a reflection of all the complications they’d had in their relationship over the years. His hopeless pleads for her to protect herself, the way she kissed him to slow his breath and steady his heart, how his heart broke a million times watching someone else get to enjoy her, care for her, kiss down the places that he was kissing now. 

He could feel it, the hesitation, the words she was about to say before she said them.

“Don’t fall in love with me,” she whispered softly, so low that he could barely hear her, her eyes full of warning and desperation and desire as he looked down at her. She needed this, whatever this way. She needed this just like he did, he realized. She needed this release from the pain of these kinds of weekends, the realization that their friends were getting married while they were stuck in the past, stuck in behaviors and situations they thought they had gotten over, and he wondered beneath it all if she felt it the same way, like it was easier to breathe when he was around her. 

“Too little, too late,” he muttered, trying to unbutton the front of her dress. 

“I’m serious, Stiles,” she said, the edges of her voice sharpening, “We can’t do this if you can’t detach it or if…”

“If what?” 

“If it’s going to make things weird.”

“Like it was so good before tonight?” he replied darkly, a snarl curling in his voice. 

He can practically hear her heartbeat quicken, the familiar clench of anxiety in his stomach. 

“Stiles,” she started and he was focused but then he got the top of her dress open and saw her lacy red bra and all thoughts of anything besides how much he wanted all of it left his head. There was nothing in between his ears except thoughts of her, of how sexy she was, wiggling and squirming in front of her. 

He leaned in and kissed the top of her cleavage, the softness of her skin urging him on, leaving kisses, love bites, sucking while he took fistfuls of her ass into the palms of his hands, spurred on by her soft moans and the tightening of his pants around his crotch. 

The way she moved her hips against him had the room feeling so small that he felt like he could reach out and touch all four walls if he wanted. It was invigorating, different to feel like the room was collapsing on him because of her movements against him. Whatever space the room had to offer, he didn’t want. He didn’t want the space, he just wanted her closer, moving against him, her tight red dress well and off. 

The alcohol pumped through his system, probably a little drunker than pleasantly buzzed and he prayed that he would remember this, sucking on Lydia’s tits as her moans filled the space around him. He wanted to lean up and kiss her lips but he knew, he knew deep down that if he did that he’d be a goner and then he’d never be able to detangle his feelings from this encounter. He knew deep down that he might just never recover and that if he missed her before, he’d die without her now but it was easy to push his face further into her cleavage than it was to think about the aftermath of this whole ordeal and—

“Stiles,” she said impatiently, wiggling against him, her hands against his chest as he sucked on her pulse. 

“What?” he asked stupidly, his verbal reflexes slowing down before him like he was running through jello.

“Off,” she whined, pushing him away. 

He jumped off, backing away with his hands off. 

“Shit, sorry, sorry I thought you wanted—”

The words cut out in his throat as she stood in front of him, looking up at him with big green eyes and a decidedly not innocent look on her face.

“I want something else instead,” she said, her voice taking on a tone he’d never heard, a tone that immediately made him harder, the pressure nearly uncomfortable now.

He felt a hundred percent powerless to stop what he knew was about to happen and he wondered briefly if he was being taken advantage of but then her hand traveled down the buttons of his shirt, over his belt, down his zipper and it quickly confirmed that he wanted this — he really, _ really _ wanted this and he didn’t care if he would regret this in the morning if it meant he got Lydia for those moments, the stolen moments in the bathroom of a bar.

“Oh my god,” he choked out as she sunk to her knees in front of him and every wet dream he ever had in high school came true in that moment, the moment that she sunk now on her knees to unzip his pants and pull his hard cock out. 

“Stiles,” she exhaled against him, her breath hot against him as she wrapped her hand around him and he had a hard time focusing on anything apart from ignoring his reflection in the mirror in front of him.. He had to reach out to brace himself against the sink; she hadn’t even put her mouth on him yet and he was already practically falling over, giddy and light-headed with the implications of the situation, the thought of finishing anywhere near her. The fact that there was a very real possibility of that happening in upcoming minutes made lust clench uncomfortably in his stomach.

He looked down at her as she tried to get her hair out of her face, one hand around his cock, stroking gently as she ran her fingers through her curls and pulled them to the other side. 

His jaw must have been on the floor because she scowled up at him. 

“What?” she said a little drunkenly. “Haven’t you ever seen a girl fix her hair before?”

“Not like this, no.” 

“Well then,” she replied resolutely and in a moment, she took him in her mouth, all the way down to the base, shocking Stiles thoroughly.

“Lyds, holy fuck,” he gasped, bracing with both hands now as she started to move up and down, her tongue running up and down the underside of his cock. “Oh my god.” 

“Not God, just me,” she said, winking at him, and he could have died in that moment, knowing that beyond a doubt, this was not a dream and not a figment of his imagination. 

Her plush red lips slid up and down him and he wondered how it was possible that nothing was smudging around her mouth, some sort of makeup magic that kept her mouth colored inside the lines. 

He let her do her thing and tried not to think about the fact that she’d practiced these moves on other guys, years of experience and nameless, faceless men that he’d never heard of. He tried to think about how it felt like he had spent his whole life with her doing things for other people and not for him, not even for herself. 

Whatever moments had gotten them into this one, this complicated, fucked up situation was one he was grateful for. Even if he never got her again, he could die knowing that she’d gotten down on her knees, willingly, moaning his name, pulling his cock into her mouth. The thought of it, the feeling of it as she ran her tongue along the underside of his dick made him twitch in anticipation. He wanted to reach out and grab her hair, digging his fingers in like he had dreamt of so many times. He wanted to taste between her legs, lick her clit until she came on his tongue. He wanted to lift her up and fuck her until she screamed his name. He wanted her to whisper in his ear that she loved him while they finished together.

“Fuck, you feel good,” he moaned, finally giving in, keeping one arm on the sink as a brace and the other hand deep in her hair, gripping lightly and scratching her scalp with his nails without giving it a second thought, trying to stop himself from thrusting into her mouth. 

She moaned around his cock and he shuddered for breath. 

“I won’t last long if you keep that up,” he admitted lowly with a shaky exhale, never wanting the moment to end. 

She giggled around him, pulling away slightly to speak. “Were you going to last long anyway?” 

He smirked, mildly offended and entirely turned on, tugging on her hair slightly and loving how her head moved with his tugs, her neck loose and her eyes hooded. “Rude.” 

That was what made them work back in the day. He pushed and she pulled, tugging each other where they wanted to go. No one could piss him off like she could, with her big green eyes and steel heart. No one could get him as riled up, thinking of her ass in the little skirts she always wore, like the one she’d been wearing tonight. Riled up by the way she was looking up at him in that very moment like she knew exactly what she was doing. Every part of him was screaming at him, that he wouldn’t survive this, that he wouldn’t be able to come back from the brink after he knew what it was like to feel her like this. 

“You’ve wanted this for a long time, huh?” she said teasingly and he thought it must be absolute torture, his dick so close to her mouth as she rubbed in his face all the times that he had admitted he liked her over the years. 

“Not now, Lydia,” he panted, trying to get a grip on his emotions and trying not to cum too fast, but her mouth felt so good, so good he was struggling to hold back. 

“Why?” she replied, making a popping sound with her mouth as she pulled off of him. _ Fuck, she’s hot. _

“I’m just trying to enjoy it before…” he started, but then she did something new with her tongue and the words left his brain, whatever thought had half-materialized disappearing in an instant. 

“I said don’t fall in love with me,” she defended offhandedly like an afterthought, clearly focusing on her task. 

“Jesus, Lydia,” he gasped, trying to focus on the conversation but finding it very hard with the way she was now moving her mouth and her hand in tandem, “Gotta give me time. I’m not gonna fall out of love with you if — if shit like this happens.”

“I warned you,” she said and somewhere in the back of her tone, he can hear a darkness creeping in, the sobering effects of what they were actually doing rolling into the backs of their consciousnesses. 

She ran her mouth against him, putting her head on the side of his dick to run her tongue up and down.

He wanted to tell her not to sleep with that guy again until he had a chance to fall out of love with her, knowing full well that the reality of that could only happen in an alternate universe. A selfish, stupid part of him was happy to be the other man, that she’s choosing him over her NFL boyfriend for those moments, and then he remembered that what’s-his-face wasn’t actually at the party and she would still be going home to the apartment they shared together, diamond bracelet twinkling. 

The same tennis bracelet that was sparkling on her wrist in the dim bathroom lighting as she sucked him off on her knees. 

Fuck, it hit him all over again. Lydia Martin was on her knees, sucking him off. His stomach clenched again, heat pooling inside him, a coil tightening. He had the fleeting thought of it leading to sex and squashed it quickly, focusing on that pleasant feeling rising inside of him.

“Are you gonna cum for me, Stiles?” she asked, all green eyes and red lips and it’s another color combination she never thought would work but it does; he can feel in his bones how well it’s working. 

“Dunno,” he choked out, trying to play off how close he was really getting to spilling into her mouth. 

“Lies,” she teased, smirking slightly as his cock hit the back of her throat, making him gasp.

“Shut up,” he panted, only half able to pay attention to anything outside of her mouth. 

“Look at me,” she said softly and like always, he couldn’t help but give in to what she wanted, the sound of her voice dragging his eyes down. He looked down at her and his jaw went slack at the sight of her. Her hand, nails matching her red dress, her eyes dark and sexy, her mouth wrapped around him, the way she was looking up at him like she was doing this for him but also for herself, like she was enjoying herself.

The ghosts of a million sentences crowded in his throat. _ I love you, I need you, I only want you. _

“Come for me, Stiles,” she said, stroking his cock in front of her face and he could feel it overwhelming him, the release on top of him before he could come up with one straight thought.

With a groan of her name, he came in her mouth, gasping for air as sensations overwhelmed him. 

He watched as their gazes met, his eyes hooded and hers matching, watching as she swallowed gently. watching as she wiped her lip with the side of her thumb and sucking the finger into her mouth, Stiles’ own mouth dropped.

The orgasm took the edge off and yet there was still a Lydia Martin in front of him on her knees, looking up at him with puppy dog eyes. A Lydia Martin whose panties were probably wet and the thought of actually being able to see Lydia Martin’s panties sent him into a frenzy.

He needed to touch her and he needed to feel her and he needed to make her feel as good as she had made him feel. 

He picked her up by her ass again and set her up on the counter. She leaned back onto her hands and he thought desperately about how he couldn’t wait to see her squirm for him. He pushed down the cups of her bra and leaned down to take her nipples in his mouth, testing the waters. Did she like it soft or rough? 

“Stiles,” she gasped into his ear and he could feel it, the familiar tug towards her, the desire he had to want to just make her happy, just make her feel good even if only for a few minutes. 

He wanted to make her forget what’s-his-name, forget whatever shallow lovers she’d had in the past, lovers who focused on themselves instead of worshipping her. The room continued to close in on him and he welcomed the pressure. Maybe if he got her off hard enough, kissed her hard enough, they could stay in this room forever and he’d never have to know anything but Lydia’s skin and moans and breath around him again. 

Sucking on her neck, he had an errant thought about whether or not she’d have a hickey the next day. A fucked up part of him wanted to leave a mark, to have her boyfriend discover what she’d been doing even though it would have meant more hurt for Lydia. A darker, deeper part of him felt like she deserved it, to feel a sliver of what he’d been dealing with for the past decade, his tether and his anchor three thousand miles away.

His hand traveled up her thigh and between her legs, gasping as he found her wet, wetter than he had even imagined she could be. Wet and warm and silky smooth and it was every wet dream he’d ever had culminating into one moment, getting to see her spread her legs so he could touch her. 

He wanted to tease her like she had always teased him, torture her as payment for all the times she’d tortured him over the years. He walked his fingers slowly down the creamy skin towards her knee, listening for the hitches in her breath as he drew little circles, pulling his kisses back to light peppers across her jaw, on her cheek by her ear. He hesitated there, wanting to whisper something in her ear but the words failed him. Which words was he supposed to use in a situation like that?

She bit her lip and he couldn’t help it any longer, pushing a finger into her into an instant and her teeth released her lips, her mouth falling into a gasp. His thumb moved up towards her clit, rubbing lightly and then more solidly, spurred on by her little movements, her mews, her gasps. 

It was better than any dream he’d ever had, the way that she was clenching and squeezing around his finger as he thrust it out of her, rubbing at her clit gently.. 

“Want another?” he asked, some semblance of words finally coming to him again.

She nodded frantically, rolling her hips against his hand. 

“Why are you doing this?” he breathed, adding a second finger even as he said it.

“What?” she breathed, confused, her tits in his face and he leaned down to kiss them, suck them, while pumping two fingers in and out of her. 

“Why are you doing this?” he muttered against her skin, the soft skin above the cup of her bra.

Even in the clouded lust, he can sense what she’s going to say. 

“You make me feel more than anyone else,” she admitted, her voice choppy and her words distracted.

“More what?” he urged, desperate to hear it, desperate to understand where she was coming from, what she was looking for, what expectations she had.

“More me,” she gasped, grinding against his fingers. 

It did nothing to help his confusion and she knew, knew that there was an argument behind it. It pissed him off, her obstinate opposition to giving him anything to work with. Her words annoyed him and set him off and he wanted to get her there even more desperately, reaching his thumb up to rub at her clit, sending her gasping.

“You can’t say shit like that,” he growled, anger bubbling inside of him, hot and reckless like the lust inside of him too.

“Stiles,” she groaned, a dream come true. 

All of the reasons that he should have been wary of this situation flooded over him. The tears, the drinks, the way that he couldn’t get her off his mind. He was only twenty seven and the years of everything weight on him; he might’ve only had those years but he had seen this before, lived and breathed this before. The friendship and companionship turned back to the jealousy, the abandonment, the grief, the loss. He wasn’t scared of the fall; he’d felt the ground before and had been okay, the pits of guilt and agony, but the recovery was what scared him, the newness of this situation. His anchor was supposed to keep him grounded and somehow, Lydia had always kept his head in the clouds, blind to the reality of how she felt, how this was going to end.

He had to get over this, he realized with a start, his finger stilling on her clit.

He had to fall out of love with her.

He pushed the thought back, dizzy with the way she was surrounding him and pressed his face into her neck, breathing in the scent of her, moving his hand gently again, the sadness, the loss rolling over him in waves. 

“Please, please, let me fall out of love with you,” he muttered to himself, to her, to anyone else if that just meant they were listening. “You can’t do this to me.” 

“Stiles,” she breathed. 

“I have to fall out of love with you,” he begged, panting, pulling away so his eyes could meet hers. “Please.”

“Can’t,” she gasped, not in response to him but to his hand between her legs, clenching around his fingers. “Can’t wait.”

He could see how wet she was when he pulled his head back and looked in between her legs, could barely control himself from reaching down to pull his fingers out and taste them. He could barely see, hear anything outside of her, vision tunneled and attuned specifically to her, but he still wanted to make it good, wanted to flood his senses with her.

A wonder crossed his mind fleetingly; he wondered when the last time she made love was and realized that what they were doing was the stark opposite of how he’d imagined their first times when he was in high school. Rose-tinted lenses cover all his adolescent fantasies of her, seeing her in something lacy on his bed, glowing softly as she’s wrapped up in his dark sheets, gasping his name as he felt her around him for the first time. 

It was a shock to the system, the fantasies that he’d replayed in his mind a thousand times coming to visit him now in this moment, when his fingers were curled inside of her, her tits out and her chest heaving as she moaned around him, pulling him closer, pushing him away when she didn’t get what she wanted, muttering dirty somethings under her breath. 

He had resisted the urge for too long and pulled his fingers out of her, sliding them into his mouth, tasting her for the first time. Stars nearly exploded in his eyes and she looked at him heavily, her eyes closing and her hips twitching without her control as she watched him do it. 

“Let me go down on you,” he begged, reaching down again to rub at her clit, to slide two fingers back into her.

“No, no,” she whined, wiggling in front of him, thrusting against his hand. “I wanna get off, Stiles. Please.”

“Lyds—”

“_ C’mon _, Stiles, please,” she gasped, looking in his eyes and saying his name, practically begging him and he wondered if he’d ever see her like this again, falling apart in front of him, begging him for something that she so desperately needed, something only he could give, “C’mon, I’m so close.”

Her words rendered him completely unable to focus on anything but her. He wanted to get her off more than he’d ever wanted anything in his whole life, more than he wanted to pass any test he’d ever taken, more than he’d wanted to shoot the winning lacrosse goal, more than he’d wanted to scream from the top of the building how in love he was with her. 

Right now, he wanted her in the throes of an all-consuming orgasm because of him. 

Every one of his senses was filled with Lydia. The way she touched, soft and then rough, how she felt, warm and slick and smooth around him, how she breathed, practically airless and floating in front of him, her legs wrapped around his hips as he fingered her, sliding in and out of her, watching every little moan to see what she liked, studying her and trying not to get lost in the emotion. 

“Stiles,” she gasped and all of his dreams came true. 

She gripped his shirt and pulled him towards her, kissing him deeply as she came, clenching around his fingers, moaning against his neck, breathing into his shirt, the fabric clutched tightly in her hands. He was panting and he realizes she was too, leaning her forehead against him as she rode whatever wave she was on now, the alcohol or the orgasm or something else, something stronger. 

They stayed there for a measure of time he couldn’t quite recognize, frozen in a moment of confusion, clouded with longing and raging with lust. 

The steady rumbling of the pounding bass outside came buzzing into his head as he came down, everything shifting just slightly into focus like the better pair of lenses during an eye exam. 

All it took was a moment. In a moment, he sobered up, the cloud of lust no longer veiling his logical side, the aftermath of what had just happened spilling before him and seeping into the edges of his consciousness. He could hear people knocking on the door and he turned suddenly to make sure it was still locked, panic rising in his chest at the idea of being caught, of what Scott would think of him doing this, hiding away in a bathroom at his engagement party while Stiles fingered the girl he’d been in love with since third grade until she came all over his hand.

Her eyes were still closed, her chest heaving as he pulled his fingers out from her in a way that he hoped, more than thought, was discreet and leaned over to wipe them hastily on a paper towel. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lydia wobble a little bit. 

“Fuck, Lydia,” he said worriedly, holding onto her elbows gently to steady her on her heels, wondering for the umpteenth time if all of that had been a good idea, if she was going to wake up tomorrow with less clouded judgment, hating his guts and cursing his name, “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, her eyes a little hazy, an expression he’s never seen before right under the surface. Something close to peaceful mixed with trepidation, an anxiety he didn’t often pick up from her.

“You sure about that?” he asked, looking back and forth between her two eyes. 

“Just came really hard,” she said with the tiniest, breathiest giggle. If there was something he never thought he’d hear Lydia Martin say in his presence, it was that. 

“Oh…” he gulped, flexing his fingers nervously. 

“Thanks,” she whispered with another chuckle. 

“For—?”

“For… for the orgasm, I guess,” she laughed, turning towards the mirror and wiping under her eyes, pulling her lipstick out of the bag on the counter, one that he had barely even noticed until this moment. “For asking if I was okay.” 

He gulped, wondering if her boyfriend really never asked if she was okay. The thought made shame and guilt and at the bottom of it all, a foundation of anger well up inside of him. She wiggled her dress down and the absurd urge to avoid looking at her ass washed over him, reality settling into his perspective again.

“I, uh…” He reached up to scratch the back of his head. “You’re welcome, I guess.”

She looked confident in this moment, in the afterglow of a strong orgasm, applying her lipstick and looking at him through their reflections in the mirror.

“You okay?” she asked, reflecting his question back to him.

He stood behind her, awkwardly wanting to wash his hands or grab more paper towels or do something other than just stand there but she wasn’t saying anything and the tension in the room grew, not the good kind of tension that he’d been experiencing an hour ago when he realized that she wanted him tonight.

The opposite. The kind of tension that made him feel like something bad was about to happen. The calm before the storm. He tried to ignore how good she looked bent over as the feeling of dread grew in his chest. 

“I’m... I don’t know,” he started, swallowing thickly. “I’m—”

“Come home with me,” she said suddenly, turning to him, her hair whipping around her shoulders.

His eyes grew three times the size. “What?”

“Please, Stiles,” she said, her bottom lip poking out. 

“Are you serious?” he said, his voice coming up into a snarl at the end.

“Nothing has to happen, I just… ” Her voice trailed off and 

“Where’s your boyfriend?” he spat out at her and she flinched visibly, backing up half a step. 

“He’s in Seattle,” she bit back, a look of acceptance for everything that was happening on her face now, “Remember?” 

His thoughts raced at a million miles a minute, running over every possible scenario.

He searched her face for any sort of joke, for the hesitation behind her actions. 

Falling asleep next to Lydia and waking up to her again, the glow of white sheets and morning light streaming through the windows. The inevitable fallout flashed before him, the moment that they both realized that they couldn’t be together. His experience knocked from the depths of his memory, telling him that there was nobody she would ever break up with for him, his insecurity taking over everything and tarnishing the moments they’d had together tonight.

What he wanted to do flashed before him like it had already happened. Looking at her in disbelief and walking out, cleaning his hands of this decades-long obsession he’d had with her. Coming clean to Scott, to Malia, to Liam. Moving on with his life. Awkward interactions at pack meetings and an eventual invitation to her wedding that he’d decline. 

There was no situation where this ended well. No reality in which they got their shit together and worked through their issues. There was no universe where she fell in love with, coming to him with tears in her eyes, saying _ I’m sorry, I fucked up, you’re it. _ There was nothing that he could do to make this work, to make it okay in his head to go home with a woman in a relationship.

Guilt bubbled in his stomach as he thought about what they’d just done, what he’d allowed to happen, what he’d wanted and reveled in, the fact that it was one of the sexiest encounters of his life and that he’d still replay it in his head in his weak moments, late into the night under the covers by myself as he jerked himself off. 

She took a deep breath and turned back to the mirror. 

“I can’t do this—” 

“Stiles…” 

“I was serious when I said that I couldn’t do this,” he replied slowly, trying to work his way through the shakiness his brain and body were simultaneously experiencing, the whiplash of emotion from the night, the fighting and the orgasm, everything mixing together in a cocktail mixture that made his stomach churn. 

“I know,” she said quietly, harshly, like she was trying to stop herself from feeling anything.

“I can’t go home with you, Lydia.” 

“I’m in a hotel,” she said, the ghost of a smirk across her face.

He looked at her incredulously, completely in awe of how she could switch so quickly. He knew that she had to know that it couldn’t end like this. He could practically read her mind and there were no expectations of what would happen after this was over, after the lust faded from their foresight and they were able to see things more clearly now. 

“I can’t do this,” Stiles whispered, his voice nearly breaking.

“I know,” she repeated, her voice thick and Stiles braced himself against the inevitable rush of emotions, the desire to comfort her and the pain that he felt knowing she wasn’t happy. 

She couldn’t have thought that there was more to them even though there was; she couldn’t have thought that it would end up with them falling into bed, with him going happily after her while she was in a relationship with someone else. She knew what she was doing, what she was dragging him into, talking dirty in his ear and looking at him with a look he’d always yearned to be on the receiving end of.

He must be a masochist, letting himself fall for her over and over again. He didn’t want her gone but he knew that he couldn’t stay, that he couldn’t himself know what it felt like to fall asleep with her in his arms, his face buried deep in her hair. He wanted to drop to his knees and ask her why, beg her not to push too hard, make her realize that he couldn’t say no to anything she wanted and if she asked enough, he’d break himself into a thousand tiny pieces trying to make her happy.

They had both wanted it, he had wanted it so desperately that he could still taste her on his tongue, feel her ass in his hands, but at the end of the day, they were both scared adults, trying to muddle their ways through life and it was going to end just how she expected it to, with orgasms and yet another fracture in their relationship.

“I can’t go back to your hotel with you,” he repeated, thoughts swarming in his head and buzzing between his ears.

“Because of Justin?” she asked, her voice soft now, her face serious. 

Stiles let out a humorless laugh, knowing that whatever came out of his mouth next would probably be mean. “That’s his name?” 

Lydia’s arms tightened around herself and she seemed to shrink a little. 

“Yeah,” she said, steeling herself and adjusting the bracelet on her wrist, her eyes flicking up to Stiles as she did so. “His name is Justin.”

It felt like a stab to the heart.

“Justin,” Stiles repeated, watching her fix her jewelry, wipe under her eyes one last time, arrange her curls so they fell just how she wanted.

Their eyes met in the mirror and in an instant, a flash of transferred emotion, he saw her for how she really was. Broken, empty, struggling just like him. Walking through life, stringing together moments of positivity to convince themselves that they were fulfilled. Engaging in reckless behavior, cheating and drinking and waking up to a hangover, to _ another _ hangover. She was flipping through emotions with him, signaling that she was on edge and if that wasn’t clue enough, everything that had happened tonight was signaling that she was just like him deep down. 

They had always been two sides of the same coin.

She was just as fucked as he was, both in the grand scheme of things and in the monotonous details of life, and as much as he wanted to cradle all her broken pieces in his arms and help her put them back together, there was too much at stake, too much to lose, too far of a way to fall. 

“You… you don’t have to stay,” she said, her voice wobbling as she looked down at the sink, rinsing her hands under the tap.

“I know,” he replied, his throat tightening. Everything microexpression on her face looked understanding and it broke his heart, made him want to run away. 

So he turned resolutely towards the door, determined not to let him play her again. Determined to get over whatever this fucked up situation was; whatever he could do to get over it, he’d do.

But something snapped inside of him, like the string of a cord was plucked, ringing in the center of his chest and down through his feed. Something tugged him back, thinking of the way that she looked in the mirror, the way that he could feel her emptiness from across the room. 

“If something ever happens…” his voice trailed off, his hand on the doorknob, not wanting to turn back, knowing he wasn’t strong enough

“I know where to find you,” she finished for him, her voice edged with something he couldn’t quite place. 

“Yeah,” he said, turning back to look at her one last time, her arms crossed in front of her, her lipstick reapplied, makeup perfectly applied around her eyes, “you know where to find me.” 

She was back to being Lydia Martin, an ice queen without feelings, hiding all the cracks that he’d seen peeks of tonight. 

“I… ” he started before he lost his courage, his candor weakening with every word. “Remember I love you, Lyds. I’m going to try to stop but… I have to try… and…” 

“Stiles,” she said gently, turning to meet his eyes for real this time, looking over at him with soft eyes.

He swallowed thickly, feeling like he was losing something in that moment.

“I want you to know that… besides, besides Justin,” she said, “there hasn’t been anyone else. I’m not…” 

“I know you aren’t.”

“I just—”

“I get it,” he said, wanting to reach out and touch her, hold her hand, wrap his arms around her and take away some of the pain, absorb it into black veins like Scott could with headaches.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice finally breaking and even if he weren’t looking at her, he’d be able to hear and feel her tears, salt to the wound. She rushed past him, wiping at her eyes again, looking out into the hallway quickly before slamming the door behind her with a loud bang. 

For a moment he just stood there, shell-shocked and guilty, eyes fixed on the place she had just left, noticing how the room was somehow darker, more depressing without her in it. What had been a safe haven, a sexy place, a place that he could escape to was now just a shitty bar bathroom again. His world closed in around him, pressure weighing on his shoulders, wanting desperately to keep every trace of her on his fingers, his neck, his cock. The guilt overtook him and he rushed over to the sink, just wanting to wash the guilt and hurt and aftermath off his body and out of his mind. 

He turned the tap frantically splashed water on his face, breathing heavily as he leaned against the vanity. The bathroom still smelled like sex and so did his fingers and his phone was nearly dead and it was getting late and Scott would be looking for him and he had to go home to his apartment, empty and lonely, thinking of Lydia Martin on her knees with his cock in her mouth, thinking of the fact that he’d become one thing he had thought he’d never be: the other man. 

Stiles sighed and leaned against the wall, slumping down to sit on the floor, his heart breaking into a million pieces too fragmented to be put together again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well... this story has been sitting partially written for over six months. The writing inspiration hasn't been coming to me often, but this is finally finished. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, especially coupled with the sequel in the series.


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